


Lifeline

by ficklepig



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Community: sherlock_remix, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Femslash, Post-TSoT, Pre-HLV, Remix, Self-Harm, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 09:13:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9116872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficklepig/pseuds/ficklepig
Summary: “You are afraid of something, which is unsurprising. All you people have pressure points.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Rebound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4122723) by [tiltedsyllogism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiltedsyllogism/pseuds/tiltedsyllogism). 



> Original posting and thanks at http://sherlock-remix.livejournal.com/85840.html. This story is from the school of "you should read the original and come back to this one later." 
> 
> Last fussed with: 10/11/17

THE BETRAYAL

Molly Hooper keeps a spare set of keys on a brass hook on the side of her kitchen island. Thus, Janine Hawkins has a copy of the key to the door when she needs it. Of the many things Janine doesn’t like to think too hard about, Molly’s innocent trust and honest affection currently rank high.

“We’re going to have to stop,” she says, as she pushes the door to the bedroom softly past the place it scrapes the frame. The cat crowds through and hops up onto the duvet. “I can’t get involved right now.” Janine doesn't know how she can manage the parting without tears and exposure, a revealing tussle, without letting something slip this time, some crucial piece. Nevertheless, there must and will be a way to get out clean, even if she has to be terrible.

Molly is not especially inclined to dust; it's part of her charm. It’s also a problem, because Janine needs to page through the diary without arousing suspicion, and— _damn_ it, is that Molly home, mid-day? Janine finds her hand reflexively, pointlessly seeking the little revolver at the bottom of her bag.

One flight up, the flooring in the main hallway is working loose. Through some magic of architectural cheapness it transmits its complaints to a resonating point at the entrance to Molly's flat. Janine knows this - the creaking and thumps have awakened her at night. She needs to relax.

She thumbs the switch on the lamp by the bedside, then uses the cap of a stick pen to work open the little strap on the pink-bound book and ease apart its pages.

The most important lesson Janine has learned in her thirty-odd years? Never put any secret in writing.

  


THE INVITATION

Loneliness is surely the most common and tawdry of secrets, the path to its lair an ancient highway worn deep into the turf. No one needs to be told where to find it.

Janine could hardly be surprised when Molly called. Hadn't she used her personal number for the hotel reservation? Hadn’t she spent all that time at breakfast, encouraging the girl? Had she not swooped in as soon as that silly lout of a fiancé had turned his back?

Some jaded part of her wasn’t surprised in the least – reflexive warmth welled up, concern knit her brow, her personality hastily pulled together its clothes while her mind caught up with the conversation. When she realized what Molly was really saying, that she'd _left_ the poor sod, Janine sat up fast. She swung her legs off the sofa and closed her laptop, flexing her toes into the thick white rug, already considering shoes, reservations, no, a casual pub. “Do you want to meet for a drink?”

Each time, each time, she swore she would never take this path again, this sweetly curving trail, winding out of sight. Who knew where it would turn, over what charming landscapes … before it ended in a dismal public row, or worse? But Molly was different - where was this worry even coming from? Janine could play for a bit and stay aloof. It wasn’t as if there was _sex_ involved. She had space to tidy her thoughts and plans before tomorrow.

Her heart was running hard as she laid down the phone, but not from fear or excitement. She wasn’t flailing in the dark, she wasn't getting hooked. For heaven's sake, she'd spent less than three minutes chatting and already she was putting on her running shoes. There was nothing wrong with feeling flattered and pleased - pleased for a little diversion, pleased for a break in the routine. It had been ages since she’d been out without a work agenda. She could be of some use to Molly now, and what the boss didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone for a while.

\---

Perhaps the timing was arbitrary, a casually creative exercise, nothing sinister, when the next afternoon the boss stopped close behind Janine’s work chair and leaned in to snuffle the air over her head, laying his clammy hand heavily on her back.

“Someone,” he declared, “is happy today. Someone is looking forward to having company.”

She was stone. She was ice. She knew this game, but he was so, so much better at it than she was. She continued to type and writhed aside to smile up at him, a teasing and natural sparkle in her eye.

“Just the usual – bottle of wine and a good book, unless something more exciting comes up.”

“Oh, yes. A ‘good book’. And a bottle of wine. You do like your wine. Don’t let me keep you. Leave early, if you like. That proposal will wait.”

As far as Janine knew, he never bothered to have her watched. But what would be more obvious? To leave early or to leave late? What would give him more mean satisfaction? And would it be safer to satisfy him? She didn’t see him again that day. Did he not care, or did he enjoy leaving her wondering? She finished a draft of the proposal, gathered her things and left at a quarter to six.

She lingered over toiletries in the supermarket, indifferent to the bottles and tins she lifted and replaced. She walked across the park to a different store, and then another, for wine, and then a little walk along the waterfront as the breeze grew cooler, and finally, yes, of course. Of course she was going to do this. It was long past time to call Molly.

  


THE INTERVIEW

It was set up like an elaborately cruel prank.

Janine had dressed with care, eyebrows and nails professionally sculpted, pains taken with foundation garments; but as she crossed the threshold into the lavishly understated modern office to confront the sphinx-like receptionist under the subtly tinted accent lights, she knew she’d plunged in very far over her head, indeed. 

She hadn’t understood why she’d been called for this meeting. She’d been gearing up for a hard sell, pacing her bedroom, rehearsing her virtues, just in case she got the chance, but her CV was truthful. Utterly inadequate. As the severe little woman ushered Janine through the airlock and into the presence of five dark-suited figures, though, it began to make a sick kind of sense. Seated behind a broad expanse of green tempered glass, palms down on the tabletop, artfully relaxed: the man from Saturday night.

“Back so soon?” He blinked twice, unsmiling. “Don’t think I’m going to fuck you again.”

Three of the others – a short black man, a bald white one, a woman with a tight blonde chignon and a military mien – were ranged around the enormous room, perched at their own sleek minimalist desks, focused on laptops. They did not appear to be listening. The fourth, another white man, middle aged, trim, was seated near the door with his legs apart, hands on his knees, neutrally alert and professionally unremarkable. They all were probably bodyguards, at the least. None of them was “Mark” from the club.

The man from Saturday night spoke again, very precise, his voice a shade louder than necessary.

“Given your willingness to come with my flunky the other night, I wouldn’t think you much value your life. Your degree of intoxication” – he widened his eyes sarcastically – “hardly explains your carelessness.”

“Mark” had approached her at midnight and briefly outlined the proposition. He dropped her off near the club again just before dawn. The club was in was a terrible location for public transport, but it would hardly have been wise to go straight to her flat, or even to her neighborhood. She had not missed the slimy stain on her skirt, positioned so that she couldn't quite conceal it with her jacket or bag, and she knew that any attention drawn to the armored Aston Martin would also be drawn to her. She'd walked a half mile from the drop-off, carrying her good pair of shoes, before she gave up and called a cab. 

“There are scars under your arms," the man continued. "You took trouble not to expose your belly, but I imagine the scars there are similar. They suggest a need for extreme stimulation. In order to feel … punished? Perhaps simply in order to feel.”

It was funny he should say that, just as she detached entirely.

“But you are afraid of _something_ , which is unsurprising. All you people have pressure points.” He cocked his head and made a small affected magician's gesture, as if he were teasing a card from a file. As he lifted his hands, she saw their prints on the glass, outlined by a light misty halo.

“Hmm. In care from the age of eleven. Something here about a diary … discovered by a teacher? A pastor. Well, well. I bet you’re still religious. And here, yes, the father. My goodness. My _goodness_.” He tutted and clucked as he swiveled his gaze from one upheld hand to another.

The performance was fascinating simply for being so repellent. Yet it was a bit pathetic, too. The facts he laid out were in the public record, their acquisition no great feat of malevolent power. The naked aggression was shocking, but the content not as threatening as he seemed to imagine.

He looked back up at her, extended the eye contact, pleased with his little coup. “There are my cards on the table. What can you do for me?”

Janine fumbled with her briefcase, looked around uselessly for a seat. “My background may not seem quite as extensive as you might … my references,” she stammered, “are, are excellent.” She glanced at the audience. The scene was surreal. They truly appeared to have no interest in the goings-on. If only they’d gawked, if even one of them had looked at her, or hidden a smile, or frowned.

The man let her stand for some minutes as the sweat collected in her bra and her hair. She was fascinated to see how her body could, of its own accord, react with shock and humiliation, while she felt nothing at all. She recited her accomplishments, trailed off. Started again. Just as she began to relax and feel her fingertips, he interrupted.

“Yes, fine. You’ll do what I say and you will get a lot of money with which to hang yourself. Follow the receptionist. She'll show you where to sign all your various little rights away.”

“Oh. Well, thank you, I—”

“Go away. I don’t have any more time for you, Miss Donlevy.”

“It’s Hawkins,” she corrected, automatically. A moment of delay before the chill of understanding washed through her, then it was as if time split in two, every moment stuttering over itself as she tumbled into the pit.

He blinked again, a shade too slow. She saw that this was a tell. Behind his flat stare, his slightly pursed lips, a demon danced and howled with glee.

\---

From day to day, he left her alone. (“You’re useful, but not much fun.”) Janine accomplished many hours of legitimate work in close contact with him but without interference. She discovered that she was in fact very talented at the less savory aspects of the job, despite occasionally having some feelings about it, easily quelled. She was paid magnificently.

“You will receive some money to start with. Dress yourself. You won’t be allowed in here again bundled up like the last day of a sale at H&M.”

She chose a tailor, and a flat, and a new phone, and added some private cab services to her contacts. Clothing aside, it was amazing what a girl could drink with that kind of dosh.

  


THE FATAL ERROR

It hadn’t occurred to her that “Mark”’s real name might be Mark, until he introduced himself to Molly.

Her heart plunged when she saw him at the bar, with “Aiden” and a stranger, a ginger who looked like someone she might have known a decade ago and leagues away. She was not being followed, and she was fairly sure she wasn’t being threatened, unless something had changed drastically since she’d last seen the boss. No, Mark seemed as surprised as Janine was, and maybe that was worse. She indicated with a little roll of her eyes toward Molly that he should come to the table - a bad decision, but was either that, or bolt, which would definitely pique his interest.

She turned away from him and watched Molly sip, a smart, cute little smile around the straw in her negroni.

A chill slithered down Janine’s back. She had forgotten. No, she had lied to herself that she had forgotten, because she hadn’t understood how much she might want this and what she might do to get it. She had plowed ahead without plan or purpose. They were two friends playing together with grownup drinks, and grownup dresses, and grownup ex-fiancés - a great lark. Now this delicate thing was unfurling and expanding in her hands and she had only the roughest idea how to keep it alive.

She knew the moves, but they were all moves toward sex or, briefly, drugs or, earlier, access to razor blades and privacy. They were refinements of gross motor spasms – she’d learned to keep her head up and land where she looked and to look like she’d meant to do that. The moves were social lubricant, a little rubdown, sincerely kind but with a purpose, moves administered before she scarpered, before the boss pounced. It was good manners to make people comfortable (so said her Da, rest his evil soul, and then Peter, let him burn), even if you were going to hurt them later. All very useful knowledge in its place, but here she was seated across from a nice girl with no agenda. Her own playmate, sweet and fun, a girl without complications. Not one of the impersonal sadists and victims for whom she’d actually practiced.

Speaking of whom, she was having no trouble flirting with “Aiden”. She did fancy him a little - she'd figured him out months ago, and thought she could control the outcome. If his uncouth friend here, Bill, had the same tastes, then maybe something in a supervised club space, some other night.

But if she’d thought for a moment she could trust Mark to entertain Molly, simply because he seemed to catch Janine’s signals without too much nodding and gesturing, she knew better when he threw her a knowing, predatory look over Molly's shoulder, one corner of his mean little mouth turned up.

With a surge of fury, she disentangled herself from Bill and Aiden, took a breath, and ever so gently grasped Molly by the arm, from behind. “Moll, would you help me in the loo? I’ve snagged a thread on the back of this top.” She turned to Mark, sugary with contempt. “Sorry to break you up. We’ll be back in just a bit.”

Molly followed her into the lobby of the toilets, let the door close behind her, stood with both hands meekly on her little purse, the blue of her dress both saucy and innocent, the velvet at her neck likewise. She clearly had no idea what kind of sickness she was rubbing up against.

Janine felt angry at Molly. With her vulnerability, her politeness to Mark as he made the facts so ugly and stark. She fussed at her hair, giving herself some space. It had been lovely with Molly, it would probably go on being lovely for a while, but a deep bell tolled in the next valley over. Foreboding. 

The kiss when it came was, fast, deep and real. A flash flood. Molly could not have done anything more stupid if she'd ambushed her with a needle full of the sweetest, cleanest dope. 

  


THE AQUIFER

_She is towed with sluggish jerks through an infinite black ocean, grasping the tail of a small black cat. Above, an infinite dark grey dome. Soundless ripples lap around her neck, a sharp warm smell of sex. The soft motion of breathing. Long ago, their direction was lost, and she knows the cat is failing. Bitter sadness taints the water around them._

_The white cat swims by; the decision is made; the decision was made already, the betrayal a foregone conclusion, acted out as an afterthought. She takes the white tail, she drops the tail of the black cat. Bitter sadness, sinking behind. Brief sorrow. Brief shame. Behind, away, then gone._

_Hesperus, the cat, swimming strongly. Hesperus, a long bright stream, a line of light across the water, a promise of joy towing her westward to the Hesperides._

She woke very warm, nameless and boneless, formlessly happy in darkness. A small blue glow lighting a corner, a small table. The shape breathing, still air resolving into the smell of a bed, a small body shifting, rising, a thump. The cat. Molly. Hesperus. 

Hesperus, did that make any sense? It sounded nice. Hesperides, bright and true. Janine turned over, moved a leg against Molly’s, and breathed again into sleep.

  


THE NEAR MISS

One of the candles on the mantel guttered out, and Janine asked Molly to look in her bag for a lighter.

“What, you don’t smoke! Believe me, I would know.” Molly flipped on the kitchen light, dug into the bag, produced rolling papers. She stared at Janine in disbelief.

“A simple tool with many uses,” Janine retorted. She nabbed the packet from Molly’s fingers, pulled out a paper, licked it and stuck it on Molly’s forehead. Molly tugged it off, folded into quarters and stuffed it unthinkingly into her jeans pocket, which Janine had seen her do with gum wrappers, sticky notes, receipts from chip-and-pin machines. She’d also seen her empty the same items, washed and dried, into the trash as she got dressed in the morning.

“Lighter, please.” Janine fished into the candle holder for the end of the wick, lost in the wax. A silence stretched out and Janine paused. She knew there wasn’t a lighter in that bag.

“Is this what I think it is?”

No, thought Janine, looking up at Molly’s wide-eyed, serious face. It is so much more than that. You have no idea.

“It’s okay,” said Molly, and a smile crept across her face. “I’m not going to ask to shoot it.”

Janine couldn’t suppress a laugh. Something terrible welled up inside her – warmth, liking, a hideous urge to confide. It was so much safer to be dead. Alive, the blood moved inside her, toxins were excreted and perhaps detected. Springs rose to the surface, secret sources revealed.

“I wouldn’t let you shoot it anyway – it’s incredibly inaccurate. You could maybe count on it if you put it right up to your own head.” Molly stopped smiling.

Oh, love, thought Janine, the truth is ugly.

“You can scare people with it, that’s about all. But I’ll show you something neat.”

She sat down at the dining table and opened the gun. Molly brought her a small pair of pliers. She pulled one of the bullets from its casing and handed the cylinder to Molly, who tipped its little burden into her cupped palm and brought it to her face, unconsciously sniffing.

“A baby tooth. Lower left center incisor.”

If at that point Molly had asked outright, Janine might have told her. She stood there sweet and easy, warm eyed, curious, understanding. One crack, a little seep, and then the dam. The moment passed. With a quick resigned smile, Molly turned her palmful over into Janine’s open hand.

“You couldn’t hide anything there if you were worried about someone stealing it,” said Molly. “Wouldn’t they just take the gun with everything else?”

“It depends who you’re hiding it from.”

Janine reassembled the dummy and reloaded the gun, which she handed to Molly because she was obviously curious.

“Be careful, though. One of the bullets is live.”

  


THE ASSIGNMENT

Janine was impatient for lunch. She'd hustled Molly out at half seven, barely put herself together, and hadn't had time for breakfast. She couldn't do anything about it now, because the boss was taking his sweet time over this meeting with Umbrella Man, the second meeting in as many days.

At last, the man left the meeting room, accepted his umbrella and satchel from Aiden, who stood by, and saw himself to the door.

“Ta!” Janine called out as she waved, unacknowledged. The boss might have something to hand off to her, and then she could eat.

Aiden bounced on the balls of his feet. “He sure looked grim. Wonder what the old man has on him.”

“The ‘old man,’” the boss purred as he sauntered in, “is quite the happy camper. And you should be more worried about what he has on you.”

Aiden nodded and moved as if to leave the room, but the boss put up an arresting hand. The other stayed deep in his pocket, where Janine could see that he was toying lightly with his prick. “No need to go anywhere, I’ll just be a moment and then you two can cultivate your tenuous social bonds over lunch.”

Janine’s heart sank as he turned to her. It must have been a very good meeting. It was going to be one of those days.

“Miss … Hawkins.” He hesitated ostentatiously over her name. He strode around to her side of the desk – it was going to be one of _those_ days – crowded up beside her and opened his trousers with his free hand. She sat very still as he leaned hard on her shoulder and masturbated to completion over her keyboard. One minute forty-two seconds by her monitor readout. She reached for a tissue to hand to him, but he tucked himself in without care.

“I have a job for you now. When Sherlock Holmes crosses your path and attempts to seduce you, you should take him up on it.”

“Sherlock Holmes?” An irritating complication. She wasn't thinking straight. “I’m not sure I can —”

“Of course you can, you whore.” He pushed the side of her head as he stepped away from her, strode toward his inner sanctum, then appeared to hesitate. He turned on his heel, awkwardly close to Aiden, so that he was calling out across the young man’s wincing face. 

“Oh, and _Janine_. You may recall a recent spectacular trial, in which the accused was acquitted despite a mountain of evidence that had many an honest newspaperman crying into his beer.”

“James Moriarty?”

“Of all the little mice that you have been whoring around with, _Janine_ , which little mouse do you suppose gave some of that evidence?”

He waited. There was a small wet spot by his flies. She closed her eyes and licked her lips, her breath tight in her throat. “Molly Hooper?”

“She knows more than she thinks she does, and she’s just the sort to write it down. Go fetch.”

He smacked his lips, turned away and shut the door behind himself.

Janine sat with her hands in her lap for eight minutes, then unplugged the keyboard and walked to the kitchen to toss it and its souring load into a bin. She called IT for another one. She would work through lunch.

  


THE FISHTANK

_She is floating in an infinite silvery ocean. Below, the infinite grey deep. Massive white forms loom beneath her, and descend. Slow, smooth and indifferent, sinking into the dark. Two, she thinks. Three. Many._

_A form rises some way off, ahead and to the left – she hears it breach and blow. That sort don’t hunt. She begins a slow, near-silent breast stroke. She is safe enough as long as she doesn’t attract attention._

_On its first pass, the hunter brushes her ankle. She gasps and flails and almost sinks. Rights herself and treads water with the tiniest terrified motions. She has begin to breathe normally when it shoves itself crudely between her legs, lifting her, its dorsal fin scraping her, rubbery weird as it passes. She yells and now it is beyond her, sinking swiftly away. She breathes in half-moaning gasps, thrashing, staring wildly for some sign of where it has gone, and she sees it some way off, circling back and gathering way again as it skims toward her, unbelievably fast, just below the surface._

Someone was shaking her, rolling her shoulder back and forth. She could hear herself groaning out loud in the early grey light, and she turned toward Molly with her mouth still open, rolling onto her body, straddling her leg, mouth against mouth until the response came. Her hand between her own legs, a quick painful spasm, but she needed more. She tugged roughly at the bedclothes, inhaling, seeking down Molly’s hot narrow flanks like a blind animal until her mouth was on her sex, licking and breathing through the shuddering response, Molly’s thighs tight and secure over her ears, little mermaid hands soothing her. When Janine came again it was loud and too long, and she was still gasping when she rose to close herself in the loo.

Later, it looked like Molly had fallen asleep sitting up for her, the bedclothes rearranged and tidied, invitingly folded back on Janine’s side of the bed.

Janine leaned over to kiss her head, pulled the covers over her, and let herself out.

Something nice, she thought. She should do something really nice for Molly before it was too late.

  


THE LIFELINE

Janine photographs each page of Molly’s diary, careful not to spread the unbroken spine too wide. There isn't much written in the book, and she doubts there is anything of use in there, but she can’t bring herself to read it.

She goes to the dining table and takes a pencil and the packet of rolling papers from her bag. She takes out the pistol and checks each chamber, then lays it down, prepares a rolling paper, and lifts her pencil. Her heartbeat is pounding in her fingertips, and she thinks she might tear the little note.

Where can she even begin? One secret leads to another. One justification on top of another on top of another is only a bigger pile of shit at the end. Where would she even stop?

Finally, she writes:

> _I pay a man to look in on my_  
>  _mum. If ever you forgive me,_  
>  _call the number in the gun._  
>  _Ask for Kay._

She returns to the bedroom and tucks the gun deep under the mattress. Molly is the sort to change her linens but never flip the bed. Then she lifts the diary open again, almost to the back, licks a tiny spot on the edge of the rolling paper, and slips it between the pages.

Off to the zoo, she thinks, and then probably some kind of fight to cap it off. She owes Molly at least that much. And then she will find a way out of this, out of all of this, and disappear for good. "Pssht!" she hisses at the cat, and claps lightly at the animal until it cringes away and slips out of the room.

At the threshold, she suffers a moment of indecision about the little tooth under the bed. She wavers, then goes. She's left it in good hands.


End file.
